


In Our Noir Life

by kwritten



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Human, BDSM, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-10 02:08:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Damon/Elena- Damon is a big time mobster, running BDSM clubs as a front; Elena is a dancer in one of the clubs. Damon becomes possessive over who gets time with Elena and eventually claims her as his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the one where Damon is the lead female in a romantic comedy

If there was one thing you could say about Damon Salvatore with surety was that he didn’t like to get his hands dirty.

 

Until she walked into his bar.

 

Damon Salvatore rarely had time to deal with the interviews for the girls in his clubs. He was a busy man, keeping up a chain of “gentleman’s clubs” littered across the South as a front while secretly engaging in what could only truly be described as organized crime, but he felt the term too indelicate, too simplistic, for the sheer amount of interpersonal ass-kissing he did on a daily basis.

 

The Salvatore reputation depended on a devotion to silence. Mostly those who knew him called him “Boss” – which explained enough to anyone who didn’t know. He had contacts, contracts, affiliates, underlings, all of whom kept his identity close to the chest in fear. The only retaliation for a break of trust with Damon Salvatore was an inevitable death. It was a concept he prized above all others, it ruled him as thoroughly as he ruled his little empire.

 

And an old-fashioned empire it was, one that depended upon favors and smiles and silences. One that ruled through names and secrets, through charm and intuition; big gestures and big, flashy products tired him and so he never had a hand in them – once it was clear he no longer needed to. (Hired thugs were capable of keeping such things running; Salvatore kept his delicate hands out of such productions, reaping the benefits without having any need to acknowledge their existence.) It wasn’t typical – not in an age in which smiling and handshaking was done far more often for devious purposes by legitimate businessmen, while the crime lords were left to trade tricks with each other, running underneath the system like rats – while all the while the main stage was more corrupt than anyone fully realized. It was a time in which the lines between professions was blurring – a time when someone like Damon Salvatore could easily take advantage of both worlds, both sets of rules, and come out on top.

 

He believed, fully and utterly, that his approach had a delicacy, a refinement, a romanticism that the world was otherwise missing. He gave the world a sneak peek at a distant past, he built a livelihood on convincing others that they could live in that glorified world yet again.

 

So busy was he, living the archaic life of leisure, that he rarely bothered to deal with the day to day responsibilities of his clubs.  There was something about this new spot, though…  posing as a Swing Club and featuring an archaic big band sound for the respectable members of small town-Mystic Falls, while catering to a  _select_  crowd within its bowels – that he felt personally invested in. Something he had not bothered with in over a decade.

 

He had been feeling restless in the big cities there’s only so much New Orleans-kitsch a man can take in his life. He was getting older – still much younger than most men in his  _industry_ , but still… the ridiculously large plantation mansions in Mystic Falls were selling for cheap in the current economy, and under the complacent façade of the town, Damon sensed a setting ripe for his interests and  _special skills_.

 

A town in which his quick smile and smooth manners (along with his fiscal generosity) would easily ingratiate him into the inner circle. It was a town he could get lost in, where he could pretend to be normal for half a moment. A space where being normal was so relative - where everyone was dedicated to the facade of normalcy. A town that would cater to his own aspirations of forgotten grandeur, where he could dig deep into his own fantasy and have the space with which to convince others that time had indeed stopped.  So he had picked up and moved; giving himself time only to design a club and refurbish his newly acquired mansion into a Southern Noir playground.

 

His biggest club – in New Orleans – he had left in the capable hands of his second hand, Rose. She was fierce but loyal, and had a crew of women that would keep things running smoothly in his absence.

 

Rose had been looking to retire soon – had started out as one of his “dancers” in that first club; won in the best poker game of his life. She had once been a delightful ingénue that had tickled his interest when they were both young and recklessly invested in their own pursuits, but now was his most trusted advisor. They had wrestled themselves into this world side by side, picking each other up when they fell and never looking back.   _(No one knew that she preferred the company of his other girls… No one suspected their relationship was as platonic as that between a brother and sister.)_  She was starting to get tired of the life, and there he was handing over half of the business to her. It’s not like it could be helped, there was no one else he could really turn to. Sage had her own handle on Atlanta, sending a smaller cut of her earnings each year…  _(The last man who had joked about Damon Salvatore and his female-driven mob was gifted with a sharp knife slipped between his ribs.)_ … and Stefan….

 

He rubbed his face with one hand and shuffled the stack of applications on the desk in front of him. Damon was constantly cleaning up after the string of forever damaged and battered women left in the wake of Stefan’s insatiable appetites. He was too much a danger to Damon’s girls, to the business, to himself… Sage and Rose had both promised to kill him if he ever set foot in one of their clubs again. He was too headstrong to deal with the intricacies of personal relations, too violent to run one of the clubs, too complacent to be sent off on his own, and too self-flagellating to be given any tasks in the field. Damon had once considered sending Stefan into the military or into a Police Academy – it would serve his purposes to have someone on the inside and Damon had hoped the discipline would have helped Stefan even himself out – but his younger brother tore off to Europe at the mere mention of the thought. Eight months later he resurfaced and the expense of the clean-up wasn’t worth another such argument.

 

Damon looked up when he heard a small cough in the chair on the opposite side of his desk, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, and only barely registered a slight female form on the edge of the chair, long brown hair …  _everywhere_. He looked back down at the papers and pretended to be fully absorbed in the blurry text there,  _How long had she been there?_  A message was beeping on his phone – it was Leonard, his receptionist. Damon sat down and extended a long finger toward the flashing red light, a tinny voice bursting into the room.

 

“Boss? Boss? You’re 3 o’clock is here. Are you done with Miss Gilbert?” Leonard’s voice held the unmistakable accent inherited from his French Creole mother, even when distorted by the ridiculous speakers on Damon’s desk phone. Damon hired the large man for all the things people would notice about him – and all the things they wouldn’t. The 30-something year old man was nearly 7 feet and over three hundred pounds of muscle, his features were a perfect blend of his French and African ancestry… and hidden under all that masculine physicality was a sweet-tempered gay man who loved Damon’s girls like they were all his own baby sisters and volunteered at an animal shelter in his spare time. Most women figured him out within a matter of minutes and had him wrapped around their pinkie fingers by the end of one evening, while the average male just steered clear. He was the perfect asset physically, add in his utter devotion to Damon and the girls – it had taken him only a few months to promote from bouncer to Salvatore’s personal assistant.

 

Damon stared stupidly at the phone and then at the girl in the chair across the desk, her lips were pursed into a smile she was trying to hide, her head bowed  _he still didn’t have a handle on what exactly she looked like at this point, but if her delicate and long – impossibly long – limbs and fingers were any indication, she wasn’t bred for this line of work_. He cleared his throat, “Why don’t you just take care of the 3 o’clock and—”

 

“No need, boss.”

 

“What.”

 

“It’s no good boss. I told you not to order so many roses, I’m going to have to send some back.”

 

Damon Salvatore sat back in his chair and stared at the phone. Either he had lost his mind, or his assistant was rambling about roses, “Leo – what the fuck are you talking about?”

 

Leonard’s voice sounded strained, “The roses, boss. They’re dated. No one likes them. You should really trust me on this one.”

 

Damon was suddenly aware that the girl in the chair across from him was now giggling aloud – and it was a nice laugh. Low, sultry, not at all what he had expected. Not at all what a giggle should sound like. It was practically obscene, that giggle.

 

The girl was suddenly leaning over him - though he was sure that she could have reached the button on the phone without coming to his side of the desk, he could smell her own musky skin just under a rich sandlewoody scent as her elbow grazed his knee - "Leonard? We got it. Thank you."

 

She said it as though she had spoken to Leonard through the phone on his desk, draped just above his lap, every day of her life _. And it felt oddly as if this were true. As if it could be true; but it was only for a moment and then she moved and he pushed the feeling aside as if it had never been._

 

“Roses. She was too old,” the girl looked up at him. “Get it?”

 

He coughed, or something. He tried to be gruff, but she just stared at him wide-eyed and so innocent looking, there leaning up against his desk as she turned to face him.

 

Leonard scooted through the entrance with two steaming hot cups of coffee and beamed at them, the girl set aside some papers and hopped up on Damon’s desk, clutching the coffee in her hands with a smile – as though that was the most normal thing in the world to do at an interview – swinging her legs so that the loose skirt he now she saw was wearing, caught on his knee, his thigh, his chair, threatening to pull loose and expose her.  

 

Leonard did not offer Damon the other cup of coffee. Instead, he pulled up the chair so recently occupied by the girl in front of him, and nursed the coffee himself. Within moments, Elena Gilbert – for that was her name, Damon learned as he followed the quick volley between herself and his assistant – had revealed half of her life story.

 

_Damon stopped asking himself how Leo seemed to know everyone everywhere they went – it seemed as though the large man had known this girl her entire life, the odds actually being that they met earlier that day in line at a quickie-mart._

 

In between sulking that he had no fresh coffee of his own and being heavily distracted by Elena’s bare legs – less than inches from his own and in constant movement, Damon was able to glean quite a substantial amount about her life, without having to engage much in the conversation at all.

 

She was a psychology major at the State college only a half hour’s drive from Mystic Falls – she commuted every day, keeping up 16 units and working part-time on campus. Her parents were dead – as were all other family members, except a younger brother who was starting at a university that year. A brother that it seemed she all but raised alone  _there was a certain tone to her voice when she spoke of him, a tenderness and possessiveness that Damon recognized echoing emotions he still had for Stefan_. She was hoping to become a child and family therapist _but he instinctively knew that a girl like her would fare far better in an environment with people who understood death on the personal level she so obviously did._ _This girl, swinging her legs so carelessly beside him, carried death about her person in an instinctual way – she had known too much of it. He felt an inconceivable urge to pull her into his lap, to tease her to tears and then wipe them away. To hurt her until she hurt him._

 

 

And then she was addressing him – and somehow he had lost track of their conversation, he had missed vital pieces of information about this wisp of a girl perched on his desk.

 

“I can work weekdays, from 9 pm to 3 am. And if you need me here earlier to help with…?” her eyes scanned the scattered papers littering Damon’s desk.

 

He cleared his throat, “Nine is  _fine_.”

 

And then she had breezed out, after laying a quick kiss on Leo’s cheek. Just like that. With just a nod of her head.

 

And Damon was left alone in his office with just the memory of her scent and Leo’s positively gleeful smirk.

 

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

 

He loved to watch her at her work, from behind a screen he sometimes half thought she knew was there (though how could she know?). She was methodical in her every moment, looking down from such great heights at the men and women that begged her to hurt them.

 

But the pleasure her customers found was not in her whips and chains, was not in those impossibly sharp fingernails as they drew blood across the chests and arms of men crying out with the pleasure of it, it was in her eyes.

 

They weren’t dead. He had believed they were – the first time he watched her bring a man to tears with her instruments (she was the best around, she was famous, they all wanted her). She had no fear in her eyes, no passion or emotion – she had seemed so dead to her actions.

 

And then he had glimpsed her once, looking down at a man as she traced the edge of her stiletto heel down his cheek as he panted in pain and pleasure… and there in her eyes was a look of such wonder and curiosity. He had stopped and gaped. He felt something stirring in him that he had never experienced before, an unconscious need to possess that gaze.

 

This young girl, impossibly violent and impassioned to the pleas of her willing victims, who was able to walk out of his club each morning as innocent as she had first walked in, was in complete  **wonder**. Not dead, not cold, completely entranced by the moment. There was a sense of complete honesty to her gaze that struck him to his core.

 

It was possibly in this moment that Damon Salvatore lost his heart to this young girl. Although he would always say it was that first day in his office – with her legs so close to his own. But they both knew that was just a story he told.

 

He began to watch her anytime he could after that – hand-picking her guests as slyly as was possible. Her honesty in the moment was so rare in this world so completely reliant on a sense of production and performance. Elena Gilbert never shied away from the brutal reality of her dark actions, she embraced them without pleasure or fear: just as they were.

 

He had seen so many examples of both extremes. His brother, who became so lost in the passion and feelings of power that his eyes went dark and his mind was completely lost into the action. Women who worked in the business so long that they became desensitized to the world he created around them, their eyes empty as they went through the emotions. Elena Gilbert embraced each moment without passion but with a bizarrely intense interest, it drove him to distraction. Her eyes haunted him – their compelling interest in every scream and sigh, the way her whole being seemed to respond to her world. They followed him into his dreams.

 

He lost hours watching her watch her handiwork on the patrons that flocked to her deft hands.

But the pain came from her eyes. The screams were all the more poignant and meaningful under her watchful gaze. He saw new meaning in every deliberate movement she made – as she gasped at the wonder of her own body, at the way it could harm another’s into the purest pleasure they would ever know, at the way her body responded to another’s passion  – she was not lost in the moment, she was not detached in the moment, and he saw in her open eyes the responses of her victims grow ever more pained, ever more from the depths of their own pleasure at having her watch them want her. It was intoxicating, this young girl’s gaze.

 

But she didn’t want you – she wouldn’t even fake wanting you. Damon was surprised there was no complaint about this, that his patrons not only were comfortable with this strange girl who watched her customers as if they were animals in a zoo – a strange curiosity that she experimented on with no emotion, only a detached wonder – they requested her with an alarming frequency. Her attitude added to their desire. He told himself he watched her in order to make sure she did not go too far – there was always the threat of real harm in her detached movements. He told himself he watched them watch her in order to find the root of their pleasure in her wonder at their habits.

 

He had known many girls and many styles over the years. The bored woman, who would only move toward her patrons if they begged. The silly girl who delighted and laughed at the men on their knees. The woman for whom the sight of blood and pain made her reckless with pleasure. The hesitant, shy lady who had to be coddled into every motion, who had to be guided into each position as she blushed and shook with her own fear. Each persona had its own perks and most consumers knew when they walked in which woman they wanted – which position they sought over the others. Some would switch and experiment with other performers – would ask that their regular performance be altered for one night. Never before had he seen such wide-eyed innocence, devoid of bashfulness and so lacking in judgment, disdain, or passion in one of his clubs. Never would he have thought such a girl would be so popular.

 

*             *             *             *             *             *             *             *             *

And then one day, he was watching her as he usually did and something seemed different.

 

No one commented on his nightly surveillance of her room. Elena was his favorite girl, that was his prerogative. And not unusual in this line of work. The other girls coddled her for being so young; the bartenders and bouncers treated her more gently - less flirtatious, less ribbing, more like she was their kid sister's best friend from High School home for the holidays (Elena Gilbert made everyone feel like that) and his awkward, sneaky attentions didn't really change that, not the way it would have with any other girl. (Elena Gilbert wasn't like any other girl.)

 

But tonight something was off, something was different. Something was just a bit unusual. There was Elena, working as she always did – with one of her regulars – but in her eyes was just the barest glint of satisfaction and devious amusement.

 

Damon Salvatore was awestruck.  _(He shook the thought away with a slight grimace; he wasn’t the lead female in a romantic comedy – why did he always imagine a voice-over following him around?)_  It wasn’t what he was expecting; it wasn’t what he had hoped for.  _(Had he really hoped for anything, really?)_  The change was subtle, he probably only noticed because of his growing obsession with those eyes.

 

The warm coffee in his hand grew cold. The phone in his pocket buzzed incessantly. Time passed and he seemed all the more aware of every passing moment. There was just something so off-putting, so unsettling about that expression on Elena’s face. Still raw, still laid open for anyone to see, still with the same characteristic honesty – but so different.  _(It wasn’t what he had hoped to see – he had hoped to see something less primal, less disconcerting, less dangerous. Deviousness was not a word he would have picked to describe Elena Gilbert – and yet, there it was in her eyes.)_

 

A small, thin hand suddenly came to rest on his lower back and a breathless voice said, “Sorry I’m late Mr. Salvatore. Did you get my messages?”

 

He turned to smile at the late dancer and was confronted with  _(her hand still reaching out, though his body shifted, now resting on his waist as though they had just been dancing, as though they were both young, carefree friends comfortable with each other’s skin – but where her light hand rested on his waist, all he felt was fire)_  Elena Gilbert.

 

He blinked down at her confusedly. Her long hair was a mess – tossed up in a messy bun on top of her head, revealing her impossibly long, thin neck,  _so many things about Elena struck Damon as impossible – once a man who believed anything was possible, anything could be under his command – but then there was her and he started thinking only of the impossible – her hands, her limbs, her neck, her eyes… they all seemed so other-worldy, so completely at odds with anything he had ever known_  as strands escaped the elastic band and floated around her face. She was flushed and currently biting her bottom lip with concern, her eyes evenly directed at him as always. She was wearing a bright pink sorority sweatshirt over skinny jeans and trainers  _(he had the impossible thought that if he pushed her up against the wall and slid his hands under that baggy sweatshirt all he would meet was her impossibly thin body wrapped only in her own thin, warm skin, which impossibly had more of an impact on him than the dozens of times he had watched Elena Gilbert nakedly writhing on top of someone else)_  and he had the sudden thought that of  _course_  she was in a sorority – probably was a cheerleader in high school as well. Confronted with her in this startling way  _(being forced for the first time to consider his girl outside of the world of his club, in the places where he couldn’t follow her gaze)_  he seemed incapable of forming words.

 

“Mr. Salvatore? Are you okay? You aren’t mad, are you?”

 

“Damon.”

 

Her eyes widened and she smiled, “What was that?”

 

_(Always so polite, that Elena.)_

 

“Damon,” he smiled awkwardly. “Please call me Damon.”

 

She looked momentarily confused and then shrugged, adjusting the strap of the gym bag she was leaning into. _(The spot on his waist where that hand had just been suddenly growing impossibly cold, as if a limb of his own was missing.)_

 

He blinked at her and then looked back through the screen where Elena Gilbert was currently tracing the buttocks of a City Council member with a riding crop delicately. “What the  _fuck_?!” He said under his breath  _(the intoxicating possibility of there being not one, but **two**  Elenas to watch at their work wasn’t something he could verbalize – as though afraid that if he did, one would suddenly disappear)_ as though it was too strong a word to verbalize in her presence.

 

Elena Gilbert  _(the one in the pink sweatshirt, he reminded himself as his grip on the cup of now-cold coffee tightened)_  leaned forward, so close to him he caught the slight scent of the lavender laundry detergent she favored, and peered through the screen.

 

“Mother fucker,” Elena said loudly. It was neither a question nor an exclamation. Just a phrase. She looked up at him interrogatively, “What the hell is Katherine doing here?!”

 

Damon Salvatore took a long swig of his cold coffee  _(a man can only take so much)_  before biting out, “Who the hell is Katherine?”

 

Elena gave him a look that said, “just how much of a moron are you?” and Damon felt her judgment down to his toes. She sighed, “My sister. My  _twin_  sister.”

 

“Twin.”

 

“Yeah – twin.” Elena shuffled a little, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why she’s here.”

 

“Twin.”

 

Elena laughed softly and averted her eyes as Katherine started to slowly unlace her corset behind the hidden screen, coughing in embarrassment.

 

Damon thrust open the door, which had no effect whatsoever on the girl, “Time’s up! Get out here, Katherine.” The man dog tied on the floor started to protest, but Katherine untied him with a flick of her wrist and sauntered out of the room as though she had been expecting it all along.

 

And then Damon Salvatore was in a hallway alone watching Elena Gilbert argue with a perfect mirror of herself. It was astounding how similar they were. His mind shut off a little as he stood admiring the beautiful symmetry of their matching lines, hearing only in small parts their argument – one that sounded so impossibly similar to his conversations with Stefan, it only seemed logical to tune it out. The way Katherine’s hair curled over one shoulder, her eyes bright with mischief. The way Elena talked with her long, thin hands  _(and he thought of those long fingers tracing patterns against his chest, losing himself in their movements_ ); the way they were both staring up at him.

 

The way they were both staring up at him.

 

“I’m sorry Mr. Salvatore, it won’t happen again. It was just for a lark,” only the way Katherine apologized, Damon imagined her rolling a cherry stem around in her mouth … the words were there, but when they came out they were twisted with the same conscious sexuality as a knotted stem. A timeless sensuality – as though she actually existed in an old talkie, surrounded by Deans and Franks, a cocktail in one hand and bright red lipstick revealing her full lips.  _This was a girl that could stand at his side for a lifetime, in this life, in this fantasy of his reality – with bright red lips and small black numbers that revealed too much and kept hidden too little. Her timeless features and expressions – they were his ultimate fantasy. And like that, the fantasy drifted on the wind, so invested was Damon Salvatore in not only getting Elena Gilbert in his bed, but keeping her there – the possibility of a perfect façade, the most perfect character to round out his life’s great performance was suddenly no longer important._

 

He nodded, “No harm done.” Why did he feel like he was the one who had done something wrong?  _(There was something in Katherine’s eyes – as though she knew how long he had watched her, completely entranced with the site of Elena that he hadn’t completely noticed it wasn’t even her.)_

 

“So you won’t fire Elena?”

 

Damon was pretty sure that he should – by all counts, he would have needed to. He was also pretty sure that Katherine was playing a game he could not yet figure out, so he merely shook his head and grinned, “Elena’s an… asset. I won’t fire her on the grounds of your behavior.” He directed his gaze over to Elena, “I have a brother.”

 

It was small. Missive. From any other man would have been so natural. But Damon Salvatore was not any other man. And Elena Gilbert was not any other woman. He never spoke of Stefan, she had never once mentioned Katherine  _(though the possibility of a twin-act would have doubled her income in a matter of days)_  and that silence was deliberate. As deliberate as this seemingly passing remark was, said so nonchalantly in a hallway with a cold coffee in his hand and her in a hoodie and jeans.

 

Katherine winked  _(Damon noticed now that Elena had covered the other girl in a baggy t-shirt at some moment during their argument)_  and walked away, somehow making it seem like her leaving was her idea and not her frazzled sister’s.

 

Elena stared down at her shoes  _(a ridiculous pair of dark purple Converse high-tops that looked at minimum five years old… a thought that was impossible. What was Elena five years ago? An innocent girl, a cheerleader, going to high school and dating her childhood sweetheart? What didn’t he know about her life outside these walls – how much did she keep buried under that winning smile that flashed with such alarming regularity?)_ , “Katherine can be… impulsive.”

 

“Stefan can be destructive.”  _The statement didn’t shock either one of them the way he thought it would… the way any normal person would be shocked to hear something like that. The way he would usually be shocked to say something like that aloud – it was so nakedly honest_

 

Elena smiled softly up at him, this smile so full of a secret they shared. “I better get changed.” She paused next to him and touched his arm softly, “I’m sorry.”

 

And Damon had the uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t talking about Katherine at all.


	2. the one where Damon wakes up in pink pajama pants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elena moves into the Salvatore mansion. In part one, Elena is working in the BDSM club - this section is about her establishing the rules of their relationship.
> 
> Heavy dom/sub constructs at play. I'm really interested in the idea of a couple using the tropes of dom/sub as a part of a performance and simultaneously subverting them. If there's anyone in the world that can pull off a dom/sub relationship like this, it's Elena Gilbert. If there's any character EVER who'd get off on the performance of these roles, it's Damon Salvatore. I hope this is working the way I want it to. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated - especially since this is such an ~experiment on my part. I hope you like it.

It surprised no one that Elena Gilbert seduced him.  
  
It surprised no one that the first time they shared a bed, he had no idea how he got there.  
  
When Damon woke that first time in Elena Gilbert’s bed (his legs trapped beneath her long limbs, her long hair tickling his neck, his right arm stretched out and held trapped by both of hers) he had no memory of the previous night’s events. But there he was – in a large, open room – sunlight assaulting his blurred senses, with Elena draped across his body as though this was the most perfectly normal situation. He tried to recall if they had – (no, he’d surely remember  _that_ , wouldn’t he?) – but the thick, cottony feeling in his mouth and the pounding in his skull and slight dizziness suggested that he had been far more drunk the previous night than he had in a very long time.  
  
If there is one truth about Damon Salvatore – it’s that he knows how to hold his liquor.   
  
But … He turned his head to look at the sleeping figure next to him, lying in an awkward fetal-position, holding onto his arm like it was a life-vest. Her hair was mussed and somehow  _everywhere_ , branching out all around her as if it had a life of its own, shielding her and tickling him, making her appear to be sleeping in a cloud. He shifted to lie on his side to face her (noticing as he did that he had somehow acquired a shirt with a large cartoon embossed on it and the words “Part of Your World” sprawling in curling letters across his chest), brushing aside her hair as he did so, picking up a lock to twirl in his fingers. Her face was a little mushed by the pillow, a light smudge of mascara lingered under one eye, her lips pulled into the slightest pout.  
  
Somewhere locked in the back of his hazy memory, he vaguely recalled agreeing to go with Leo to the local bar for a drink. It was less a bar and more a bizarre amalgam of bar, restaurant, and local clubhouse. He had been meaning to make an appearance, schmooze a little more with the locals, but business and moving had kept him so busy (and his nights were full of watching her, so much so that he had forgotten the basic concept of passing time) that it had nearly slipped his mind. But last night Elena had the night off … Leo had caught Damon wandering through the bowels of the club, feeling a little edgy and aimless, and had dragged him out. Everything was pretty clear after that – his drink with the mayor and meeting her emotionally unstable son, sharing a laugh with the sheriff (seriously, what is going on in this town?), watching Elena play pool –   
  
 _Oh_.  
  
Elena opened her eyes. Without that slow-to-wake, rapid-blinking that most people do when they first open their eyes. It was one movement, one direct motion – as deliberate and thoughtful as she always was. She wrinkled her nose at him and smiled (his arm still clutched to her chest), reaching out to tap his nose with one of her long fingers, “You got drunk.”  
  
It was teasing. It was honest. It was true. He had gotten ridiculously drunk. (Somewhere in his foggy memory there was a blonde boy playing pool with Elena and she was laughing and her hair was flipping over her shoulder teasingly and he put his arm on her waist naturally and she leaned into him when she laughed and then Damon found solace in a bottle of bourbon.)  
  
Elena groaned and turned onto her back, bringing the hand that had just bopped him in the nose up to hold her head, “Ugh… so did I. Remind me never to do shots with you and Matt ever again.”  
  
And then she was walking across the room and opening a door to what appeared to be a bathroom, twirling back to him with a large smile, “Hangover breakfast?”   
  
She said it as if it was the most deliciously naughty idea she had ever had, as though she lived for the idea, as though the words themselves shaped on her tongue gave her their own pleasure (as if they had this perfectly normal conversation every day of their lives).  
  
And then she disappeared and Damon was left alone in a bed that was quickly growing cold. He stood up slowly – his head still spinning – and looked down. And then promptly sat down again.  
  
And laughed aloud.  
  
Damon Salvatore was wearing bright pink pajama pants.  
  
  
  
  
A few minutes later, (after washing his face in the bathroom and making use of the packaged toothbrush on the counter labeled with a post-it that read: “Damon! <3”)  padding into the kitchen in his bare feet, his legs still encased in bubblegum pink pinstripes, (the bed upstairs stripped and remade, the dirty sheets deposited neatly in the hamper by the door) Damon found Elena chopping a smorgasbord of veggies at the counter. She was wearing a tight-fitting, dark purple tank-top with lace edging and a pair of blue boxers. As she leaned against the counter, one foot lifted to rub the calf of the other leg, and Damon found this action so endearing that when Elena turned to face him seconds later, he had a ridiculous grin plastered on his face.  
  
 _((And when Elena looked at him straight on with that look in her eyes that he sought out so much, he grew hard as though his body existed just for that gaze. And when she set the knife down deliberately on the counter and advanced toward him, his breath caught in his chest with the power of her movements._  
  
 _And when she took him – right there, on the floor of the kitchen her childhood home, his head bumping into the edge of the refrigerator and his bare back cold against the tile floor – he wasn’t really surprised. When she stripped him bare and stared at him before lying him on the cold ground and impaling herself on him without a word or a sound, he didn’t have time to be surprised or think anything but, **of course**. When she bit just a little too hard and smiled, swallowing his gasp with her mouth and her tongue; when she slowed down and closed her eyes to his wide gaze and moaned while biting her lip as his hips rocked her back and forth, his hand at the point where their bodies met creating shivers through her body with a simple repetitive stroke of a finger; when they both lost themselves in the frenzy of their wildly colliding bodies and it no longer mattered who was watching who– he wasn’t really surprised._  
  
 _When it was raw and real, when he forgot of the cold tile and just marveled at her wide, open gaze and the feel of her hands in his hair, the sound of her laughter))_  
  
When the dust had cleared and Damon was once again clad in his pink pj’s (which were remarkably comfortable) and Elena was calmly chopping vegetables, silently directing him to assist, a tall boy suddenly came in through the kitchen door.   
  
Tall didn’t really cut it. The child was huge.  _Probably a football player_ , Damon inwardly simpered. There was a quip ready on the tip of his tongue, a deprecating smile already curling his delicate lips at the sight of this pedestrian... And then he followed the boy’s gaze to Elena – deep purple bruises were cropping up on her thighs, there was a bright red bite mark on her shoulder, and peeking out from underneath the boxers on the back of one thigh was the hint of an impressive handprint.   
  
Damon swallowed and stared over at the boy. He really didn’t want to kill Elena’s kid brother, but he wasn’t going to take a hit, either.  
  
He was fucking Damon  _Salvatore_.  
  
And then the kid smirked.   
  
Actually smirked. There may have even been a wink; Damon would never really be sure.   
  
“Hey Matt! Elena’s making breakfast!”  
  
No one was surprised that she seduced him on her kitchen floor, except maybe him.   
  
No one was surprised that twenty minutes later he sat at her kitchen table in bright pink pj’s and had a cordial meal with her kid brother and her high school sweetheart.  
  
Or that after leading the brigade to clean the kitchen, he sat in the living room playing video games with the two boys and the mayor’s son, while Elena and two other girls hurled insults at them from the kitchen.  
  
If there was one thing you could say about Damon Salvatore, it was that he knew how throw himself into being in love.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
She wouldn’t stop working, but to appease him she moved into his mansion instead. When he preened over getting his way, everyone had the decency to laugh only after he was out of earshot. He did finally persuade her to slightly alter her services – all the pain and none of the pleasure.   
  
Her clientele tripled.   
  
She set up her own office in the plantation house. It was locked. He wasn’t allowed into it, even if he knocked. During the day, when she was dealing with research and classwork, she would occasionally spill into his office; papers spread all over the floor, her legs sprawled in all directions as she leaned over her laptop, a worn out pen dangling out of the corner of her mouth, her hair thrown up in a messy ponytail.  
  
He started working from home.  
  
When he had meetings during the day, business consultants enjoying the booze and food and decadence that the Salvatore mansion could give them after a short drive out of the city, Elena sometimes would have visitors to her office as well.  
  
He never knew where they came from. Girls parading through his house in corsets and fishnet stockings, men being led with dog collars and delicate chains, all walking flauntingly past his study.  
  
“But why did you take the doors out?”  
  
“Because darling you don’t need them.”  
  
“What if… Elena. I talk  _business_  behind closed doors.”  
  
She blinked up at him from the floor, she was always sprawled all over the floor as if someone had poured her there like a delicate liquid, “Doors were why you left New Orleans.”  
  
She made the plantation house seem spacious and secure, large but always separate from the outside world somehow. No one was more at ease than at the Salvatore mansion, playing pool or swimming or drinking or smoking with the host, admiring the young hostess. Men traveled further than they ever had for a taste of the old fashioned luxury only afforded them at his estate.   
  
“Don’t get cocky,” she whispered as he bent her over the grand piano, her breasts pressing into its dark wood.  
It could all disappear in an instant.  
She could disappear in an instant.  
  
She rearranged his office, had the large leather chairs face the entryway.  So that when she wanted, whenever she wanted, his guests would see hers parade past. It was always a sight worth seeing. She somehow always timed it perfectly right, he began to suspect that she had the study bugged. He began moving his meetings around the mansion, keeping men in the billiards room with their cigars, strolling the grounds with their bourbon. It never worked. The parade always found them.   
  
And her voice.  
  
Calling out through the walls, the halls, the windows – reaching him wherever he was.   
  
Sometimes just a rough moan that found its way through the chill of clinking glasses. Once a high-pitched wail of pain that cost him a game of badminton. Occasionally a delightful giggle, that throaty one that she knew made his toes curl, followed by the sharp crack of a whip. Her voice invaded all of his meetings, her guests always under the noses of his, her presence invading the house, echoing through the halls as he conducted his business.  
  
Business had never gone so well.  
  
He got in the habit of expecting her, raising his eyebrows at the men sitting in his high-backed leather chairs, as if this was all his idea to begin with. As if it wasn’t killing him to have to sit there, so still, when all he wanted was to run to her, to swallow her gasps with his lips and sink into her.  
  
He did once. She cried out and he ran to pound at her locked door.She had him whip her that night until she bled and he cried. And then she took him in her hands like clay and pet him so charmingly.   
  
He never left a meeting to come find her again.  
  
“I’m only being a good girl like you need me to be. Aren’t you proud I’m so obedient?”  
  
Damon stopped being surprised by her. It was easier to pretend as though he was unflappable. To play the master to her charming innocence. She always knew who was coming and what they meant. She played her game for them alone. Screamed for some and laughed for others, she seduced giants before they ever lay an eye on her. She arrived at the dinner table in a clean gown with a delightful blush, sometimes shy and sometimes brazen. She played his game by rules he never knew.  
  
Some days he longed for autumn, for the Elena in a sorority sweatshirt, for that first morning on the kitchen floor. She knew it, too.  
  
“But darling! I’m doing independent study for my final units. I told you about that project?” Sometimes she moaned into his neck and he really felt like she wanted him the way he needed her to. “My professor is quite pleased with everything I’m sending over. I thought you’d be happy. I can be here with you more.” He’d never understand how she managed to pout with her ankles crossed above her head like that. He stopped caring.  
  
 _More often than not, she knew more than he did when something more was needed. When someone was worth a little bit more of a show than the others._  
  
He tried not to look surprised when a large crash and muffled wailing drifted down the hall on the heels of her normal parade of girls. He didn’t even deign to pause the conversation when the herd scurried out the way they came five minutes later. He smiled and joked through his guest’s inquisitive glances towards the hallway, necks craning in the direction of the previous crash. He waved off their questions nonchalantly.  
  
This was his castle.  
  
Ten minutes later when Elena appeared tear-streaked in the doorway, clad in the sheer robe and corset duo he rush-ordered as a surprise from Paris earlier that week, wobbling on six-inch heels, he didn’t even look up.   
  
The other men followed his lead. They always followed his lead. If he was unperturbed by a half-naked, crying girl in the entryway, neither were they.   
  
And she was so lovely.   
  
She watched their eyes pity her from under hooded eyes, crying prettily. Her teardrops falling silently without smudging her face, her chin quavering just so, her knees only trembling under the careful and watchful eye.  
  
He watched them watch her. And waited.  
  
When he raised his glass in salute, a tiny tremor came from the entryway, “Damon?”  
  
She sounded childlike and lost. He gripped the glass, his knuckles turning white. If he went to her now, if he broke, there was no telling what the consequences would be. Damon turned a lazy, disdainful gaze to his girl and waited for her to tell him what to do.  
  
“Damon,  _please._ ” She drew in a deep, shuddering breath. The room was still. Everyone was waiting to see what he would do. “I’m sorry.”  
  
He laughed. A short, hard laugh. It felt bitter on his tongue. He extended a hand out to her and she scurried to it, holding it to her cheek and falling into his lap, hiding her head in his neck. With one hand, he took a polite sip of his drink, washing away the taste of sand and death in his throat, the other traced a pattern on her back.   
  
“Now, pet. There’s no use for this melodrama. Don’t you see I’m busy with these gentlemen?”   
  
She loved it when he called her pet in public.  
  
They all raised their voices in protest. Just as she knew they would. She murmured apologetically in his ear. She spent the rest of the meeting on his lap like a child. They pet her and told her she was a good girl. One old chap personally poured her a drink. They all laughed when she grimaced at its bitterness. Damon hand-fed her treats and they all nodded serenely at her delicate sensibilities.  
  
She brightened at dinner, came fully clothed at their prodding. She was forgiven her outburst because he forgave her. She shyly tried to defer promises of lunches with wives and daughters. She laughed at everyone’s jokes. She was a gracious hostess.  
  
“How does it feel to have the governor of Virginia in the palm of your hand?” she whispered from behind him, his hands twisting into the sheets.  
  
She wasn’t teasing. She was proud.The minute they left she kissed him softly, told him he’d been a very good boy, and led him to bed.


	3. the one where Damon throws a dinner party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Damon goes on a three day bender and Elena reminds him what their relationship is

Damon Salvatore gave as good as he got.  
  
That’s what they all said.  
  
He kept around him (in the old New Orleans days) dominant women with sarcastic, bright-red smiles and perfect heels and just a touch too much hauteur in their expressions. It was expected of him, his parade of femme fatales, as dangerous as he and as strong.  
  
What his business associates thought after having a meeting with Rose at his side, Damon was never sure. She didn’t blush or hide behind him, she never cowered, she played their games as well as they. Everyone knew the blood ran as thick on her hands as on the Boss’s.  
  
It’s what made his business worth buying into, you always knew that every front was as strong as the next. You knew that the man in charge wasn’t afraid of a challenge.  
  
(The unspoken assumption that Damon broke these terrifyingly hard women once the doors had closed was never one that bothered the women he associated with.  
  
The truth was always so much more satisfying.)  
  
  
  
Elena’s presence in his home – her gentle grace and wide, innocent eyes, was bound to change the way the business was run. She made him seem that much more reprobate, that much easier to squirrel into a more … official position. As if having a young girl at his beck and call suddenly made him a name you could put on your tax documents, instead of paying him in wads of cash stuffed into a briefcase.  
  
She and Sage worked together behind the scenes to find him contacts higher up in the political minefield of the South than he had ever before dared.  
  
She taught him that it was one thing to walk into a charity ball with a dark beauty looking down her nose at everyone in the room and quite another to escort a debutante with shining eyes, clinging to his arm like a lifeline.  
  
  
  
He escaped into New Orleans for a few days after one such event that made him feel sick to his stomach, hiding in Rose’s room with a bottle of whiskey in his hand and babbling to her just like the old days.  
  
“You keep saying that you are miserable, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so disgustingly happy in your life,” she finally spat out at him in a huff on the third day of his bender.  
  
“Yeah…” Damon gestured to his stained shirt and bare feet drunkenly, “This is the picture of domestic bliss right here.”  
  
“Damon,” Rose sighed and tugged the empty bottle out of his hand. “You would be miserable in domestic bliss.”  
  
He grunted back non-committedly, crawling to the couch and throwing himself onto it facedown.  
  
“You told me about her sister… Katherine, right? Identical twin? Much more your usual. Dark, right?”  
  
Damon turned over on the couch and flung his arm above his head, trying to ignore the way the ceiling started to spin with the sudden movement. “No.”  
  
Rose nodded as if they were having a real conversation and he wasn’t being a pouty third grader making a mess of her apartment, “I mean, that sort of reckless, dark, bad girl that you usually go for.”  
  
“She wears purple converse and a sorority sweatshirt crop top with jeans when no one else is around.”  
  
“What would Katherine wear if no one could see?”  
  
“Probably a slinky black number… Why the fuck are we talking about Katherine?”  
  
“Because I’ve seen you with a dozen Katherines over the years, and not one of them has lead you to a three-day bender on my couch. Ironically enough, for you the bad ones are easier. You don’t fall for them as hard.”  
  
Damon flipped her off and she laughed, throwing a blanket at him before turning off the light and leaving the room, “Get some sleep, idiot. Your girl is home waiting for you.”  
  
  
  
  
  
Damon liked a certain modicum of control over his surroundings. He got to the top of where he was because he knew how to keep his hand securely on the things that mattered, on keeping control of the situation at hand and only letting go when he was sure things were perfectly the way he wanted them.  
  
Elena took all that control he once had, laughed at it, and kissed him with that laugh still on her lips, as if he wouldn’t notice that she held all the cards.  
  
Katherine, and women like her, make a sport of the things that had wounded them most severely. They were already broken when they made their way to his bed, dark and hard and wanting.  
  
Elena makes a sport of the things that she thinks cannot touch her.  
  
Which makes her feel wildly out of reach, even when he is buried deep inside of her.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He arranges a business dinner a few weeks after his weekend with Rose. (He comes home and Elena is sprawled on the floor of his office, just where he left her, her bright eyes dancing at a joke her friends are telling when he walks through the door. She took the opportunity of his absence to have an old-fashioned girl’s weekend. He finds a stack of old romantic comedies in the rarely-used den and a new high score on the wii’s boxing game. That night they eat pizza on the floor and watch re-runs of  _The Simpsons_ , Elena’s head in his lap laughing and carefree.) It’s an important meeting with two old colleagues in the business, other men with clubs and double-dealings like his own.  
  
They are used to Rose being at his side for events like this, the food catered and usually in a public place. Sage and Elena insist that they have the dinner at their home, invite them to stay the night in Mystic Falls.  
  
Elena oversees every detail in the kitchen, refuses to hire anyone for the event, which leaves Damon feeling more nervous than usual. Elena has only ever proven to be an asset, but these are men he’s known for years. He buys her a slinky black dress and she makes him sleep on the couch.  
  
When he comes home from the club early that afternoon, Elena is wearing a 50’s housewife-style black and white polka-dot halter dress with her long hair up in an elaborately sleek style, pearls at her throat and dangling from her ears. He nearly chokes.  
  
“What the fuck are you—“  
  
“Hello darling!” she interrupts brightly, kissing him on the lips softly. “Go on and get dressed quickly, Leo called from the road, he’s already picked them up.” She twirls on her heels and heads to the dining room, stopping in the doorway and turning back to him, suddenly shy in a way he hasn’t seen her ever. “I’ll meet you in the dining room.” There’s a lingering sense of hesitancy in her voice and he wants to go to her, wants to drag her from this house and this life and start all over.  
  
He stares at the door long after she has disappeared, thinking longingly of the girl with too much hair and too long limbs that had sat on his desk and how desperately he had wanted to just hold her on his lap and pet her and tease her until she cried and he kissed away her tears.  
  
What a fool he had been.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He really should have been expecting it, he realizes the second he opens the dining room doors wide with his guests in tow.  
  
He should have known.  
  
  
  
  
He greets his guests (two old boys and one of their much younger wives) cordially, says all the right things, kisses Mrs. Whatshername (Beatrice?) on the hand like a gentleman, inquires after the businesses and the trip with all the interest he always has. The men are sharing a bawdy joke behind him as the wife tsks them good-humoredly.  
  
“Elena insisted on cooking your meal herself,” he’s saying over his shoulder as he throws the doors open wide, expecting her to be standing there in her red heels with a bright smile on her face. His perfect hostess.  
  
  
  
  
  
She had altered the dining room for the night so that it was set up like a lounge, low stuffed chairs and short tables and dim lighting and just next to a low day bed, on a chair that forced her knees to splay awkwardly, nearly at shoulder-height, is Elena.  
  
  
  
He thanks all her earlier training, because the sight of her tied to a chair half-naked doesn’t even give him pause.  
  
  
  
  
He strides in the room as if that’s exactly where he left her and exactly how he wanted this entrance to go.  
  
Her arms are hooked awkwardly over the top of the chair, thrusting her breasts forward, her hands tied together behind her back. Her legs are spread, her ankles above those damn red heels are tied to the legs of the chair, cutting small lines of pressure into her calves. A single strand of hair has come loose from her elaborate style and dangles prettily in front of her face.  
  
She’s wearing a black corset and red heels and pearls. Between her spread legs, Damon can just barely make out the blushing pink of her cunt exposed to the room.  
  
She’s crying.  
  
Crying her pretty tears that she saves for his business associates and clients.  
  
“Oh! Isn’t she  _beautiful_ ,” Beatrice breathes behind him.  
  
He strides over, trying to catch her gaze, but she is looking down at her knees and ignoring him.  
  
He stands over her and raises her chin with his finger delicately, taking the time to tuck the stray hair behind her ear, “Pet, stop crying and greet our guests.” (She loves it when he calls her pet in front of his guests.)  
  
She murmurs an assent (not before their eyes lock and he grows hard looking down into her fiery gaze) and the guests coo over her.  
  
“Jesus, Salvatore, did you have her cook for us on her knees all day?”  
  
He looks down and sees her gorgeous knees have been rubbed bright red and raw and suspects her palms would look the same if he inspected them; and shrugs, as if the sight of Elena’s skin raw and bleeding were an everyday sight and not one that made his heart leap up to his throat.  
  
“Please, sit and make yourselves comfortable,” Damon gestures to the low surfaces and tables overflowing with food.  
  
Before settling himself into a careless lounge on the day bed next to Elena, Damon leans down and chides her softly (but not too softly that they don’t all hear), “Sweetheart, everyone wants to see your pretty pussy.” Her legs resist for a soft moment and she whimpers as he nudges her knees wider apart.  
  
As he feeds her small bites of food with his own hands, chiding her and scolding her in even tones, he wonders for the first time why he never thought to do this himself.  
  
Her earlier stunts in his office, tears streaming down as she curled up in his lap, hit too close to home. Too much a performance of something that he desperately wanted. But this, his finger lingering over her clit as she pretends to be mortified in front of his guests, feeding her the tiniest bites of food and smallest sips of wine, as they watch, as he conducts business, this is so perfect.  
  
He delights in the way they watch her, the way their eyes gleam with desire for something he has (he laughs to himself, if they only knew what he had in her) , in the way their fingers twitch with a desire to pet and feed her also.  
  
He wants to throw them out and fuck her on the floor and hear her scream.  
  
Even more, he wants to linger over this dinner, wants to see how far she’ll go this time with this performance, wants to glide his fingers over her bare thighs and know they all long to do the same.  
  
  
During dessert, which Damon goes into the kitchen to fetch himself, unwilling to untie Elena until they are long gone; Beatrice begs desperately to have the honor of feeding Elena small bites of the delicacies she prepared. Elena blushes scarlet and cries anew, her embarrassment causing her knees to shake. Damon chuckles and spreads her legs further apart as punishment.  
  
They watch Beatrice carefully feed her with strong hands. And when Beatrice bends to kiss the tears off Elena’s cheeks, he sincerely hopes that he’s the only one that catches the amusement in Elena’s eyes.  
  
It’s a glance meant only for him.  
  
  
  
  
It is the most successful meeting of his career.  
  
It’s the most successful night of their relationship to date.  
  
He walks them to the door and apologizes for Elena’s taciturn nature. “She’ll be more talkative at breakfast tomorrow I’m sure,” he says with a grin.  
  
Each in turn congratulates him on her beauty and  _unspoiled nature_.  
  
“It isn’t your usual, Salvatore. But I must say I’ve never been more impressed with you.” The comment is ostensibly about the Mystic Falls club – or his burgeoning interest in politics – but it’s really about Elena and Damon can’t help but shoot him a cocky grin before bounding up the steps to his house and slamming the door on the outside world.  
  
  
  
  
  
She could hear him and is staring up at the door in anticipation when he leans on the doorway and looks back over at her. She fixes him with that gaze that had made him fall for her in the club, all honesty and curiosity and … now he sees, just the slightest trace of expectation. As if all this time she’s been daring the world (or him) (he’d like to think it is an expression just for him) to surprise her.  
  
He stands casually in the doorway for a beat longer than he would have yesterday, letting his gaze linger over her body.  
  
She was as clean and fresh as when he had found her there. He had been privy to several scenarios of this ilk in which the feeder garnered an additional insult of dripping food upon their bound partner’s body. One such meal had led to a girl’s breasts being dripped with hot butter. Damon had found the whole affair rather unsavory. He liked, instead, the infinitesimally small bites that she barely had to work to chew. Forcing her to be at his complete mercy.  
  
  
All this time – since that morning in the kitchen – he had felt like a leaf blown upon her wind, just waiting for the next moment to react to, living practically in fear of just what she would test him with next.  
  
He blames a lifetime of being in the business for not being able to see the forest for the trees.  
  
And lingers in the doorway, daring her to tell him to untie her, daring her to turn the tables once again, daring her to give up her role.  
  
She doesn’t.  
  
She has, of course, stopped crying. But it occurs to him for the first time that if he gave her the slightest hint that he wanted her to cry she would.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
He knows what he wants to do since he saw her tied to that ridiculous chair, her legs askew and inviting.  
  
  
  
Damon moves across the room and he feels his body sink into a predatory crawl. Her lips separate slightly, just enough to let him know how much she wants him.  
  
He kneels on the ground in front of her, and without touching her skin at all, begins to work loose the corset. It’s front-lacing and he  _could_ dispatch it quickly.  
  
He doesn’t.  
  
He can hear her breath becoming harsher with every flick of his wrist as he draws out the ribbon one achingly slow step at a time. He looks up at her for a moment about halfway from the top and catches her staring deeply at him. He quirks one eyebrow at her and it says everything he should have said so long ago.  
  
 _I'm here with you, whatever you want you just have to ask._  
  
(He probably should have said it aloud and sooner. He probably should have noticed that's all she'd ever done.)  
  
He peels the corset off her and watches her all the time. He had very specific plans when he first saw her, but she’s taught him how to be more flexible, how to change the scene even if it is already laid out.  
  
(He saw himself on his knees in supplication, his tongue flicking over her cunt and her head thrown back.)  
  
Now he wants to watch her for a while. Wants to turn that gaze around for just a moment.  
  
He reaches out with his finger and traces the line of her lips softly. She takes his finger into her mouth without hesitation and sucks on it slightly, rubbing her tongue against it softly – almost too softly. He tugs his hand way from her face and leans in to kiss her very softly on the lips before leaning back and thrusting his finger into her.  
  
She’s wet and waiting for him and that nearly breaks his resolve. He nearly is the one to let go, closing his eyes and devouring her the way he so desperately wants to.  
  
Instead he presses another finger into her and begins to rhythmically rub her clit with his thumb.  
  
All the while he stares into her eyes. He knows that he can’t hide what he wants as cleverly or as efficiently as her. And so he keeps his gaze upon her, laying himself bare and daring her to do so as well.  
  
His wrist flicks just the way he knows she likes and the spell is broken, Elena gasps and closes her eyes for a moment too long before piercing him with those eyes once again. In that split second before she regains composure he sees everything he’s longed for.  
  
And it is enough.  
  
It’s his sign.  
  
His lips and tongue join his fingers, one hand nudging her hips to adjust her angle in the chair so he has better access to her.  
  
He works her until she is crying out and breathless, until her knees shake on either side of his head, until she begs, until all that is left are whimpers of  _please Damon, please_.  
  
He kisses her shaking thighs, his mouth slick with her and smiles when she chuckles under her breath at his gesture.  
  
But he doesn’t untie her right away. Takes pleasure in her being right where she wants to be – right where he can give her all she wants. He stands over her shoulders and carefully, slowly, takes out every bobbypin holding up her mass of hair, smoothing it out with his fingers for a while as her body calms down from his earlier assault.  
  
With the same careful movements, he takes care of her pearls and her shoes, unbuckling and unclasping with feather touches on her sensitive skin.  
  
He considers leaving her there for a while. Walking out of the room, her naked and wanting tied to chair as he takes a shower and has a nightcap, only letting her loose once he’s made a point.  
  
  
  
But, he doesn’t want it to be about making a point anymore.  
  
It is now – and always should have been – about them both getting what they want.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
He had seen it as a façade, a game, a tease, before. Seen her tears and delicate giggles as a joke where he was the punchline.  
  
He takes her face in his hands and kisses her lips softly before untying her from the chair and carrying her to their bed.  
  
  
  
She had been giving him what he wanted all along.  
  
  
  
  
Elena Gilbert only makes a sport of the things that she thinks cannot touch her.  
  
Which should have been his first clue that he was never a game to her.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
The next morning Beatrice takes Elena into the bathroom at the restaurant and helps her cover up the hickey Elena had Damon plant on her neck that morning. They become shopping partners and eventually Beatrice becomes a major backer in Elena’s private post-grad research project.  
  
Her husband invites Damon to his private retreat in the Pacific while they are away from the table and their business relationship takes on a whole new level.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
When he joins her and her research on the floor and rolls over her so that his back is pressed against her back and her stomach is pressed to the ground and says, “I love you,” she replies with a laugh.  
  
“No shit, dummy.”


End file.
